SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.  On a warm day this winter, the owners of Major League Baseball’s 30 franchises gathered in the foothills below Camelback Mountain at The Sanctuary resort for their first quarterly meeting of 2012.

Jeff Moorad, the bearded man wearing the “SD” lapel pin, was to be confirmed as the controlling owner of San Diego’s baseball team.

For Moorad, the pride of Modesto Junior College, it had been quite a climb — from player’s agent to an executive and minority shareholder with the Arizona Diamondbacks and now to take over the San Diego Padres.

The seller, John Moores, was set to cash in his remaining chips. He’d owned the Padres since late 1994 and, over a span of two years, sold 49 percent of his shares to a group led by Moorad.

Moores was to get $152 million, the final payment in an installment plan announced by him and Moorad, his incoming vice chairman and CEO, three years earlier.

The consent of Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig was needed, as was the approval of at least 22 of the other 29 team owners, but it was seen as a formality.

The league’s own website, days before the vote, stated, “Jeff Moorad is on the verge of completing his long-awaited purchase of the Padres.” Forbes magazine said that Moorad would “get the nod.”

Some of Moorad’s investment partners talked of a party.

Moores himself said, “It’s 100 percent done. I couldn’t be more pleased. Jeff’s remaining payment of all cash went into escrow in mid-December. I remain impressed that Jeff has done everything he said he would do.”

Then the deal, worth a half-billion dollars, came apart. In the small world of baseball multimillionaires, it’s hard to know exactly where the blame lies. Personalities, industry politics and a big TV deal all played a role.

Those with the most at stake, including Moorad, aren’t talking. Neither is Moores, who may gain in the end by selling his team for more money.

Moorad’s bid — even as it saved money on interest by closing earlier than anticipated — drew opposition at The Sanctuary and therefore moved Moores in a different direction.

Moores remains the majority owner. Although he was denied an immediate payoff, factors at play during the owners summit pointed to franchise values sustaining or rising rather than falling.

Moorad was deep into negotiations on a new TV deal that could bring the Padres $1 billion over 20 years. And if the rumblings were true about the soaring sales price of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who had to be sold by April 30 to satisfy their owner’s divorce terms, franchise values throughout baseball could be rising.

Moorad didn’t immediately give up. But two months later, not long after he returned to Phoenix to meet with his limited partners at the Biltmore Hotel, the game was up. Under pressure from Moores and lacking full support from his partners, he would step down as CEO on March 22.

So ended Moorad’s attempt to become the first former sports agent to own a Major League Baseball club.

“We’ve had so many crazy things go on in baseball at the ownership level the last year with the Mets and the Dodgers and the Astros — but what’s happened with the Padres is the most intriguing,” said a veteran official within MLB who, like almost everyone interviewed for this story, would comment only on the condition of anonymity.

Economic concerns

When the vote on Moorad was postponed Jan. 12, league insiders described Moores as angry, even seething. Moores also voted against Selig’s extension as baseball commissioner twice, each time the lone no vote.

“John was at his most animated,” said a high-ranking baseball official. “John was crazed that the deal with Jeff would not get done.”

Within sight of reporters, Moores and Moorad conferred with a changing cast of executives that included Selig, Chicago White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf and league labor relations executive Rob Manfred. Moores’ anger was palpable. Moorad’s body language was comparatively stoical.

From Moorad’s limited partnership, Moores had already received about half of the $300 million in cash the deal outlined. Moorad’s group was also to assume about $200 million in debt, most of it from Petco Park’s construction.

Lacking signoff from the league, the remaining $152 million would remain in escrow instead of flowing to Moores.

When MLB announced a week later that all 30 owners had approved Selig’s extension, industry observers wondered what Selig had done to persuade Moores to vote for him in a later poll. Some speculated that he’d promised to find him another buyer who would meet with MLB’s approval.

Opposition play

At The Sanctuary, Reinsdorf made no bones about it to his fellow owners: He didn’t regard Moorad as ownership material. Worse for Moorad, Selig didn’t seem interested in silencing Reinsdorf.

Moorad would term the opposition “not unexpected,” yet it also had to be unwelcome. Reinsdorf is one of the industry’s most powerful men. Although he isn’t the only owner close to Selig, they’ve been friends for decades.

Reinsdorf also counts among his friends Jerry Colangelo, the former Diamondbacks executive who was replaced by Moorad in Arizona. Colangelo spoke tersely about Moorad in 2009 when the U-T sought his insight into Moorad’s executive acumen.

Reinsdorf had dealings with Moorad when Moorad was an agent, but the White Sox owner isn’t thought to be anti-agent, per se. Reinsdorf’s Sox payroll includes two former player agents: Rick Hahn, a club vice-president and assistant general manager; and Dennis Gilbert, a longtime consultant.

Gilbert himself isn’t a stranger to the game of would-be ownership. He attempted to buy the Rangers in 2010, and now, in the winter of 2011, was part of a group attempting to buy the Dodgers and destined to come up well short of the $2.15 billion price that won out in late March.

Moorad also lost an ally in Ken Kendrick, chairman of the Diamondbacks. It was Kendrick who brought Moorad into baseball management.

Their relationship would sour by 2009, when Moorad left the Arizona club to pursue his agreement with Moores. By this past winter, Kendrick was outspoken in his opposition to Moorad becoming control owner of the Padres, said several industry sources.

Divorce and baseball

John and Becky Moores were seen as parents of the Padres since late 1994 when John, at the urging of Becky and their daughter, Jennifer, had put up about $80 million to buy majority ownership of the Padres. John and Becky sat together in the owner’s suite at many home games and behind the Padres’ dugout at important road games.

The two had been married for more than 44 years when Becky filed for divorce in February 2008. Because they were California residents, living in Rancho Santa Fe, Becky was entitled to half the value of John’s property.

Divorces involving owners of major league clubs command special attention of the commissioner’s office, which has no desire for a divorce lawyer to gain access to the financial records of a ballclub, let alone the league’s books.

To satisfy Becky’s lawyers, Moores likely needed to find a buyer, and soon. The timing didn’t appear good. By the fall of 2008, the economy had crashed. Season-ticket holders were defecting en masse following a 99-defeat season and last-place finish.

Moorad and his limited partners represented a solution. The three- to five-year installment plan negotiated by Moorad and Moores seemed to satisfy Becky’s lawyers.

Although Moorad couldn’t count on Reinsdorf and Kendrick supporting him, it wouldn’t be until 2012 at the earliest that he would need 75 percent of the other owners to approve him as control owner. The lag would give Moorad time to attract other would-be investors, if needed.

“I got the sense from not only Jeff but John that, while it would take awhile for it to happen, it would be a formality that Jeff would become the owner,” said Kevin Towers, who became Arizona’s GM after Moorad fired him in San Diego. “I was under the understanding that (the transfer) probably would happen before the five years.”

The sale price, in the neighborhood of $500 million, stunned many baseball executives and player agents. They thought it way too high.

“Why didn’t baseball just stop him (Moorad) from being involved in the first place?” said an MLB official. “Jeff put a group together that had some pretty good San Diego names in it. And John really wanted to do it, with the proviso that baseball still was going to have to approve it (in 2012 or 2014). I don’t know that it’s easy to tell a guy no.”

An MLB executive familiar with baseball economics said the price did the loudest talking.

“It was just too much money to pass up,” he said.

Financial aid

Moorad made a lot of money as a player agent. His partnership with NFL agent Leigh Steinberg, dating to 1985, generated more than $3 billion in athlete contracts in 18 years, according to Moorad’s bio in the Padres’ media guide.

From the start of his attempt to buy the Padres, Moorad was dogged by speculation that he himself didn’t have much skin in the game. Moorad said he had a 40 percent stake in his group.

Sometime in its vetting of Moorad this winter, the league found discrepancies in his financial reporting to MLB’s executive council, said an industry source.

It didn’t help Moorad’s cause that officials with some big-revenue clubs wondered why the Padres and other teams getting increasingly large amounts of financial aid from them weren’t spending more on baseball product, ballpark improvements or both.

In 2010-11, Moorad’s only two full years as CEO, the Padres were last among the 30 clubs in total spending on major league payroll, the draft and international signings, according to a study by another club. San Diego’s outlay of $110 million was $10.3 million less than the next team, the Florida Marlins — even as steep declines in Padres ticket revenue had continued nearly unabated since the team’s second season in Petco Park.

In addition to revenue sharing, the Padres, along with all of the other teams, were taking in rising sums of money from MLB’s licensing and its burgeoning advanced media products. Estimates have the Padres’ total assistance from the league at more than $60 million annually during Moorad’s tenure.

Meanwhile the larger revenue producers, such as the Yankees and Red Sox, weren’t getting any money from the revenue-sharing fund to which they contribute.

TV windfall

A financial gift for the Padres, and by extension, the baseball industry, arrived in February 2011 when Time Warner agreed to pay $3 billion for the right to broadcast Lakers games for 20 years, starting with the 2012-13 season. The loss of the Lakers rocked Fox Sports Net.

Hungry to line up more summer content, Fox looked with growing fondness at the Padres, whose deal with Cox Communications was to expire after the 2011 season.

Moorad and Fox began negotiating, and by April 2011, Moorad was growing confident that the next Padres TV deal would far exceed the expiring deal with Cox.

Moorad, according to high-ranking industry sources, initially targeted about half of the anticipated TV revenues for the $152 million that would be needed to buy out Moores.

No dice, said the league, whose approval was — and still is — needed for the agreement between the Padres and their broadcasting partner to go into effect. MLB’s preference was for TV money to go into baseball operations, and at least one large-revenue owner was opposed to seeing the sale of the small-market Padres subsidized by TV money.

In June 2011, the league had shot down a multibillion dollar proposal between Fox and the Dodgers. Selig said that Dodgers owner Frank McCourt — going through a divorce — was willing to give away bargaining leverage because of a “desperate need for immediate cash.”

Moorad, unlike McCourt, wasn’t going through a costly divorce. But allowing Moorad to use an upfront payment to purchase the team didn’t square with Selig’s belief that TV money needed to go into the club. It also could have exposed the league to a legal threat from McCourt.

“It would not have been good precedent,” said a high-ranking MLB official.

Moorad would have to raise the $152 million within his group, and convince MLB that the payment wouldn’t be recouped later from the TV money. Later in 2011, Moorad complied. The $152 million went into escrow in December. Moorad and his partners warranted that all of the TV money would stay in the club, not be used to pay themselves back.

The remaining capital position of the partners was important because the league wants club owners to be able to meet team expenses on their own if revenues fall short.

Moores knew firsthand that a majority owner may have to use his own money to pay the team’s bills. He had poured more than $100 million into Padres operations when Petco Park’s construction was delayed in the early 2000s. Even with that infusion Moores had cut the Padres’ baseball budget, notably in spending for scouting, the draft and player development, which are the meat of a smaller-market’s baseball operations.

Bad situation

The Padres will open their season this afternoon at Petco Park, against the Dodgers. Three years ago at the team’s opener, Moorad looked on as the newly installed owner in waiting. He made sweeping changes in the organization, including the dismissal of Towers, the hiring of GM Jed Hoyer, and then GM Josh Byrnes. A case can be made that Moorad did good things for the club’s baseball operations and a farm system that’s now a consensus top-three outfit. Indisputably, he changed the Padres in a big way.

Moorad withdrew his control bid in early March, as industry chatter grew louder that he lacked the 22 owners’ votes needed for approval.

With Moores negotiating the lucrative deal with Fox and potentially back in the market for a new buyer, Moorad stepped down as CEO on March 22. The Padres announced that Moorad will still be involved as vice chairman to work on Padres-Fox matters. As for CEO duties, President Tom Garfinkel already was overseeing the club’s day-to-day operations.

Asked if Moorad will attend the season opener, Padres officials say they don’t know but their sense is he’ll watch from home. Of late, he hasn’t been a presence at 19 Tony Gwynn Drive.

Maybe he was a short-timer from the start.

“Jeff started off in a bad situation with the Padres because he had people in the game who don’t like him,” said an MLB insider, “and they were looking for any reason to justify him not getting the vote.”